YouTube Needs to Buy a CRM

Here’s the thing… You’re only paranoid if you haven’t been screwed with consistently. At the point you’re screwed with at an ongoing basis it’s no longer paranoia rather it’s just a healthy sense of self preservation. As a content creator that has been through #Microstopped, false community strike, channel termination mid live stream, the Adpocolypse and more any time YouTube seems to do something strange I expect the worst.

This morning when I received an email stating:

Hi, my name is Kristine and I am a partner manager here at YouTube. I work side-by-side with creators to help them with their channel needs and to hook them up with unique creator opportunities. If you’re up for it, I’d love to start helping you as your new YouTube Partner Manager!

I simply groaned and wondered what the hell had happened to the Partner Manager I had spent over a year getting to know. You see YouTube is weird with the Partner Manager thing. Partner Manager’s are supposed to be creators human interface to the YouTube machine, but you can tell YouTube management simply created to position to look good and that they don’t really grasp their importance.

My first Partner Manager was promoted and LITERALLY I was told that instead of getting a replacement, that I could use the YouTube Forums. She tried to tell me that somehow a forum that is rarely answered was far superior to the services she had offered. I had to smile and stop the conversation before I went too far in explaining how stupid that thought was.

Over a year later I was given another Partner Manager on the fly after my channel was given a false community strike, I had no human to correspond with, and so I made an F’ You video to YouTube saying that I guessed that was that and I was leaving. After I had a Hangout with YouTube management I was given a new Partner Manager, and thought finally things were looking up. I spent a few very long hangouts with my new Manager making sure we both understood where the other was coming from, and was feeling pretty good all the way around until that manager was promoted, and I was summarily given the one I currently have.

I kind of gave up trying to have a relationship with my Partner Managers at this point, but the one I have is good at what she does, and my only real compliant is what she’s allowed to do. After over a year I feel like we get each other as much as is required, and at least know what to expect when dealing with her. It’s not great, but as they say it’s as good as I can expect.

That’s why when I received the email this morning my first thought was a very testy, “WTF”. Not only did the email say I have a new Partner Manager, but from the form letter it looked like I was starting from square one to the point that I would have to go through the whole tedious “get to know you” process I’ve literally done 3 times before. This does not give creators confidence. This does not show that YouTube actually believes that Partner Managers are important.

I sent a “WTF” email to who I thought was my Partner Manager, and received a reply a few hours later saying that she wasn’t going anywhere and that the email was a mistake. To a degree this makes me happy because I don’t have to train a new one, but on the other it seems to reinforce the idea that YouTube as a company REALLY doesn’t understand their relationship with content creators even to the level of knowing who has a manager and who doesn’t. Alphabet, and by relation YouTube’s primary business is data and showing relationships with data. No one has created a flipping spread sheet that has Channel Name and then the Partner Manager?

It is what it is. Not much surprises me at this point, and I’d have to care to be disappointed. My main lesson here is that if you’re going to create a massive, faceless platform at least get the few times that you deal with humans right. I’m not looking for a friend, a peer, or even Spaghetti Monster help me an actual business partner at this point, but at least knowing that a company that has made as much off of my work as YouTube has at least plugged into their CRM would be nice.

Just let that sink in for a second… YouTube can’t track which creators have Partner Managers… … …

When are they going to fire Susan Wijcicki, and find someone that at least panders to the ideas that YouTube is the media company that it is?